Sage Karam captures IndyCar's first iRacing Challenge event from pole

INDIANAPOLIS – By virtue of iRacing experience, Sage Karam was the heavy favorite.

Even outspoken sim-racing supporter Felix Rosenqvist, dubbed by many in the IndyCar paddock as the likely winner of Saturday’s first of six iRacing Challenge events, agreed.

But noticeably throughout the week, the part-time Dreyer and Reinbold driver, who got into iRacing at the platform’s forefront in 2007, kept turning lap times in the middle of the pack of 25 drivers entered in Saturday’s race on a virtual Wakins Glen road course track.

Rosenqvist went to bed Friday with a small dose of butterflies – the nerves ahead of the prospect of a win of any kind catching the 28-year-old Chip Ganassi Racing driver by surprise.

But then Karam dropped the race’s fastest qualifying time and rode it to a relatively simple victory, 3.6 seconds ahead of Rosenqvist, who shadowed the 25-year-old nearly all afternoon, but could never close the gap while weaving in and out of lapped traffic down the stretch.

In the end, maybe Karam’s most successful technique all week, while hopping on and off calls, texts and FaceTime chats with drivers across the paddock, was what he called a heavy dose of “sandbagging” his way through the week’s series of open practice runs.

It was important to Karam, who understood he might have a half-step on the field entering Saturday’s initial race in the Challenge, to help the rest of the field get up to speed – helping guys build their sim setups, linking up drivers with the right equipment and even giving tutelage when it came to the actual driving. But he could still stay ahead by just not showing his own hand.

“I was an open book. I had a lot of best friends this week. Everyone knew I was a sim guy, and there were so many guys setting up rigs and calling me. I was a pretty popular guy there for a bit,” he said. “But (sandbagging), that was so hard. I just couldn’t put a lap in cause I knew these guys on the podium with me, if they saw me put in a 24.6(-second lap), they were gonna sit there all night till they put one in.”

It’s also why he was curiously missing during Saturday’s pre-race practice – opting to run offline on his own to perfect his qualification effort, rather than to flash it for the paddock to see.

And to his credit, the second-place Rosenqvist confirmed Karam’s intuition after the race.

“Whatever lap time someone makes, you have to try and beat it (during the week),” he said. “It doesn’t really matter which track or who it is. If someone is making a time, that’s the danger with the sim. You can spend endless hours to get quicker and quicker. That’s really pretty clever to sandbag. He didn’t look like a contender (during the week) but I was kinda expecting something coming.”

In the end, Karam executed his pre-race plan – qualify first, lead 45 laps and pray – to a T, edging out Rosenqvist and third-place finisher Will Power, who finished in their qualifying spots. Karam ran away from the field early – so much that the race broadcast streamed on indycar.com and its YouTube and Facebook Live platforms rarely showed his car.

But it didn’t mean he was without some fireworks.

Near the end, with Rosenqvist yo-yoing between a 2.5 and 3.5-second gap as the two wove around lapped traffic, Karam found himself behind Road to Indy phenom Kyle Kirkwood, driving Ryan Hunter-Reay’s No. 28 Andretti Autosport car. All of a sudden, the Indy Lights driver spun, forcing Karam to pick a side and hope.

“Left” turned out to be right.

“Every time I’d get close to (Karam), Sage would react and go a bit faster,” Rosenqvist said. “I was hoping the lapped-cars part would be my advantage, with some cars flying everywhere, but every time Sage got collected, he’d manage to get through.”

For Rosenqvist and Power, the only drivers within 45 seconds of the race-winner by the checkered flag, the day was relatively uneventful as Karam gritted to hold on. Power said a tentative start plagued the series veteran, who briefly held the lead 16 laps in during a pit cycle, but quickly fell 10 seconds or so back, trapped behind traffic in a wild first couple laps, and never found the pace to recover.

Beyond them, just four other cars finished on the leap lap, including the rest of the Team Penske crew – all of which who got caught up in an early wreck that set them back. On Lap 6, two-time V8 Supercars champ Scott McLaughlin was attempting to pass Arrow McLaren SP rookie Oliver Askew on the tricky “bus stop chicane”. Both drivers spun, causing Simon Pagenaud and Josef Newgarden to collide.

All four drivers would stay close the rest of the way, sweeping fourth through seventh as the only other drivers finishing on the lead lap (McLaughlin-47.9 seconds back, Askew-50.4, Pagenaud-1:22.7 and Newgarden-1:26.4).

Other drivers weren’t so lucky. Alexander Rossi (17th), found his car careening through the air during an opening-lap crash while trying to pass Newgarden in the chicane, while Zach Veach and others weathered early accidents. In particular, A.J. Foyt Racing veteran drivers Tony Kanaan and Sebastien Bourdais both exited the race early – the former for exhausting his two car repairs and the latter for not pitting soon enough with a damaged front wing. They finished 24th and 23rd, respectively, both more than 35 laps down.

And Andretti Autosport driver James Hinchcliffe, while borrowing a friend’s sim equipment, wasn’t able to get his car loaded into the entry pool before the start of the race and couldn’t run.

But with so many drivers competing in their first or second sim-racing event on Saturday – and many only receiving their own equipment, or loaners from others, Thursday or Friday – the podium finishers all agreed the overall result amounted to a positive.

Both IndyCar and iRacing’s YouTube streams consistently combined for 45,000 fans throughout the race, with more on other platforms. New tweaks will follow in the coming weeks – new tracks and selection processes and a flurry of other IndyCar and guest drivers alike – but outside their own performances, the top finishers said they were most impressed with the quality of the event itself.

“It’s amazing you can get drivers in all different places racing in cars that look exactly the same (as their own) and throwing down the same lap times we’d expect,” Power said. “To get out there and compete in equal (on-track) equipment, I just love that. It’s what I live for, not driving the car, but to compete. That’s what I enjoyed the most.”